So Franky House found another translator to start doing Rosario to Vampire. First nobody wants to work on it for weeks and then as soon as I give the translations to Binktopia instead they've got people jumping at it. Well now I have to decide whether I want to keep on translating it and try and compete with this new guy, try and convince Franky House that they should take my translations along with letting me give them to binktopia, or just give up Rosario to Vamprie altogether. I really don't want to give it up since it was my favourite series as well as being the one with the highest number of people discussing it meaning that I can't have conversations with them about it (Defense Devil doesn't have many people discussing it). I don't want to translate it if this other guy is going to do it. The worst part is he is probably only doing it at their request, while I actually enjoy reading it.

Oh also happy birthday to argentum_canine .

I'm really regretting getting involved in groups. Ju-da-su has the right idea making every single one of your translations public. As soon as you put that line 'reserved for' at the top of your translation all you are asking for is trouble. I should just go back to making all of my translations public, except that then the two groups I am currently with will get all uppity about it. What is with people and insisting that you 'don't betray your team mates'. Gaaah. Now it makes me look like a bad guy whenever something like this happens. Well thats it. Starting from when I go up to university again I'm just going to try and get heaps of translations done. That way I'll be able to say hey at least I do heaps of translation, far more than I do for groups.

So my parents went down to Thredbo today for some skiing which meant I finally got access to the computer that has the scanner on it so I can scan in another chapter of the 4 Kuzumoto kids. Started melting the glue at 1.10pm, after holding the spine for a couple of minutes I had a marvellous idea. Why not just lay the book down next to the hair dryer and go away for a couple of minutes. A few minutes later and the pages come off the spine much easier than when I did the first chapter. Started scanning in all 52 pages at 1.20, finished scanning them in at about 3pm (a bit over an hour and a half), took the files to my computer down stairs and cropped and resized them in about 30 minutes. So I was able to get the whole chapter scanned in and ready to upload in just over 2 hours, while the first time I did it it took about 4 hours (since I didn't get the glue to melt as thoroughly and tried cropping it on the computer upstairs where it is harder to crop it upon).

Yay!

Here is chapter number 2 of Gamaran,  of which Ju-da-su has done chapter 1.

( Gamaran Chapter 2 )

If Ju-da-su wants to translation check it for accuracy before I post it on Mangahelpers I would be very appreciative as there were a couple of lines where I was a little unsure of the meaning ><

Chapter 6 of Defense Devil is done. I got this one out of the way because it's for a speed scan. The good thing about doing lots of monthlies is that these 20 page a chapter series seem so short.

( Translation of chapter 6 )

A few thoughts on the series so far,

It's not quite your standard shounen action series, but it isn't really a mystery either. It seems that Youn and Wan are able to come up with unique ideas for their manga, although they are usually pretty heavily based around real world mytholgies or legends. Shin Angyo Onshi used a lot of Korean and Chinese stuff, while Defense Devil and Let's Bible draw more heavily upon Christian beliefs. Kucabara is as likeable a main character as I've come across. He's really weak when he doesn't have access to his spinach, but once he eats it he easily outclasses his opponents, which means that he needs to solve the supposed crime before the person is chucked into hell, all the while as the shinigami keeps on taking the soul. From here on I think we will probably have another 5 or 6 chapters where he solves another case like the last two before we start getting into a bit more of an over arching theme. Although the end of the chapter did mention an unexpected client, which could meant hat we are already getting into the meat of the storyline already. I guess we'll know more next week. As for where the story might go it looks like Kucabara will eventually be set up against either the shinigami or the demons of the devil world (if they are in fact a seperate thing, I'm still not too sure yet).

I'll also just use this to note a couple of translation things. I'm currently translating the name for the souls as Unknown Souls, rather than just Unknown (whcih is what the katakana reads). This is because the meaning for the kanji is basically soul,  while the furigana is different. However in english Unknown wouldn't readily be recognised as meaning soul, so I did it that way to reduce confusion. I'm also translating Bichula's name with an l rather than an r becasue based on the way you say his name it has a slightly more l tint to it than an r tint. The oo sound in ula leaves your tongue in a palatal position making it very natural to leave it where it is in order to make the rolling l sound. However to make a rolling r sound would require you to pull your tongue back and open your mouth, which just isn't natural when you already have the tongue set out to make another sound.

Final thing is why don't scanlators put translator notes in releases anymore? Often there's really important stuff there that can only be explained if you put it in a note, and when it doesn't get put in it goes over everyone else's head.